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Notes -
Being far more familiar with the blue collar labour market in areas with lots of illegals than you probably are, I can't really give a source but you'll have to take me at my word- illegals do not get lower wages than legal workers. Part of this is doing more physically demanding hazardous work, sure, but part of it is also that any part of America which attracts illegals(they are, after all, not going to rural Mississippi) has a severe labour shortage anyways. Illegals make a very similar dollar amount to legal workers doing the same jobs, although usually without healthcare, retirement, unemployment insurance, etc. This is cheaper for the employer, but not due to wages. Illegals are preferred partly because of this, but as much because they don't smoke weed every day, ask for overtime, etc. They're there to work and make money, and the employers which hire them are used to paying cash because legal workers prefer it too(can't get child support deducted that way, can spend it on drugs without having to go to a shady gas station and pay 10% to a middle easterner who mutters racial slurs while he cashes it, etc)- but the illegals' preference for cash is far more sympathetic to most people, including the mildly racist who are nonetheless disgusted at the behavior of the lower working class that competes with them for jobs. And blue collar management in the lower midwest speaks Spanish anyways.
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